Co  97 0.7 3 
c.Z 


LINCOLN 
AS  THE  SOUTH  SHOULD  KNOW  HIM 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 


THE  COLLECTION  OF 
NORTH  CAROLINIANA 

PRESENTED  BY 

The  Children  of  Mrs.  T. W.M.Long 


Cp970.73 

D64 

c,2 


LINCOLN 


AS  THE  SOUTH  SHOULD  KNOW  HIM 


LINCOLN 


AS  THE  SOUTH  SHOULD  KNOW  HIM 


Can  the  man  who  suffered  his  lieutenant,  Sherman,  to 
ruthlessly  devastate  twice  as  much  Southern  territory  as  all 
Belgium  combined  be  the  Southern  ideal? 


Can  the  man  whose  life  work  was  to  tear  from  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  its  immortal  part,  its  very  soul,  "That 
governments  derive  their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the 
governed,"  be  the  American  ideal,  if  the  truth  is  looked  full 
in  the  face  ? 


SECOND  EDITION 


REPRINTED  BY 

MANLY'S  BATTERY  CHAPTER 

CHILDREN  OF  THE  CONFEDERACY 
RALEIGH,  N.  C. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/lincolnassouthshblac 


In  a  blaze  of  burning  roof-trees,  under  clouds  of  smoke  and  flame, 
Sprang  a  new  word  into  being,  from  a  stern  and  dreaded  name; 
Gaunt  and  grim  and  like  a  specter  rose  that  word  before  the  world, 
From  a   land   of   bloom   and   beauty   into   ruin    rudely    hurled, 
From  a  people  scourged  by  exile,  from  a  city  ostracized, 
Pallas-like  it  sprang  to  being — and  that  word  is  "Shermanized." 

L.  Virginia  Fbexch. 


LINCOLN,  AS  THE  SOUTH  SHOULD  KNOW  HIM 


What  thick  hides  and  short  memories  we  Southern  folk  have,  and 
how  inconsistent  we  are!  We  call  down  anathema  on  the  Kaiser's  head 
for  the  devastation  of  Belgium;  in  almost  the  same  breath  we  raise 
paeans  to  Lincoln,  who  was  responsible  for  the  far  more  causeless  and 
ruthless  devastation  of  the  South  by  Sherman — Sherman,  who  waged 
war  so  atrocious  that  its  very  author  could  find  no  name  on  earth  to 
match,  but  had  to  go  down  below  to  get  it.  Well  might  he,  with  Mil- 
ton's Satan,  say  : 

"Where   I   am   is   hell." 

Satan  lit  its  fires  in  his  own  breast ;  Sherman,  in  the  desolated  homes 
of  war,  made  widows  and  orphans. 

If  Belgium  had  its  Louvain  and  Antwerp,  so  also  had  the  South  its 
Columbia,  its  Atlanta,  its  Savannah,  its  Charleston. 

Countless  Belgium  homes  have  been  burned.  But  there  has  been 
nothing  like  systematic,  utter  destruction.  The  Kaiser,  outnumbered, 
hard  beset,  the  very  existence  of  his  country  in  imminent  peril,  has 
increased  his  slender  store  of  food  by  robbing  Belgium,  electing  to 
starve  foe  rather  than  friend.  (This  was  written  in  January,  1915.) 
That  vengeance,  not  necessity,  prompted  the  black  path  that  Sherman 
cut  through  the  South,  the  evidence  is  full  and  damning.  On  December 
o  18,  1864,  General  Halleck,  Chief  of  Staff  to  President  Lincoln,  and 
necessarily  in  close  touch  with  him,  writes  to  Sherman  as  follows : 
"Should  you  capture  Charleston,  I  hope  by  some  accident  the  place  will 
be  destroyed.  And  if  a  little  salt  can  be  sown  on  its  site,  it  may  prevent 
the  future  growth  of  nullification  and  secession."  Sherman,  on  the  24th, 
answers  as  follows :  "I  will  bear  in  mind  your  hint  as  to  Charleston, 
and  do  not  think  that  'salt'  will  be  necessary.  When  I  move,  the  Fif- 
teenth Corps  will  be  on  the  right  of  the  right  wing,  and  their  position 
Avill  naturally  bring  them  into  Charleston  first ;  and  if  you  have  watched 
the  history  of  that  corps  you  will  have  remarked  that  they  do  their  work 
pretty  well.  The  truth  is,  the  whole  army  is  burning  with  an  insatiable 
desire  to  wreak  vengeance  on  South  Carolina." 


One  of  Wheeler's  scouts,  observing  Sherman's  advance,  reported  that 
during  one  night,  and  from  one  point,  he  counted  over  one  hundred 
burning  homes.  And  as  to  the  looting,  a  letter  written  by  a  Federal 
officer,  and  found  at  Camden,  S.  C,  after  the  army  passed,  and  given 
in  the  Southern  Woman's  Magazine,  runs  as  follows:  "We  have  had  a 
glorious  time  in  this  State.  The  chivalry  have  been  stripped  of  most 
of  their  valuables.  Gold  watches,  silver  pitchers,  cups,  spoons,  forks, 
etc.,  are  as  common  in  camp  as  blackberries.  Of  rings,  earrings,  and 
breastpins  I  have  a  quart.  I  am  not  joking — I  have  at  least  a  quart 
of  jewelry  for  you  and  the  girls,  and  some  Al  diamond  pins  and  rings 
among  them.     Don't  show  this  letter  out  of  the  family." 

Sherman  long  denied  burning  Columbia,  in  the  most  solemn  manner 
calling  his  God  to  witness  as  to  his  truthfulness.  When,  after  the  over- 
whelming evidence  that  he  did  burn  it  was  adduced,  he  unblushingly 
admitted  the  fact,  and  that  he  had  lied  on  Wade  Hampton  with  the 
purpose  of  rendering  him  unpopular,  and  thereby  weakening  his  cause. 
But  a  mere  lie  shines  white  against  the  black  ground  of  Sherman's 
character. 

I  could  pile  up  a  mountain  of  facts  as  damning  as  those  given.  But 
what  boots  it  to  prove  again  what  too  long  ago  has  been  proven — that 
not  since  Attila,  "The  Scourge  of  God,"  cut  his  black  swath  across 
Europe  fifteen  hundred  years  ago  has  Sherman's  "March  to  the  Sea" 
had  its  fellow. 

The  conversion  of  the  Shenandoah  region  into  a  waste  so  complete 
that,  in  Sheridan's  own  words,  a  crow  flying  over  it  would  have  had  to 
carry  his  rations — a  destruction  not  only  of  every  vestige  of  food,  of  all 
animals  and  fowls,  but  also  of  every  implement  that  could  be  used  to 
make  or  prepare  more  food,  every  millstone,  wagon,  plow,  rake,  and 
harrow,  down  to  the  flower-hoes  of  the  women,  may  have  been  a  military 
necessity,  for  this  lovely  valley  was,  in  some  measure,  the  granary  of 
Lee's  army. 

The  necessities  of  war  demanded  that  Sherman  live  off  the  country 
he  traversed.  Those  elastic  necessities  may  have  been  stretched  to 
demand  that  he  destroy  even  the  pitiful  stint  of  food  that  the  South  had 
left ;  that  he  wrest  the  last  morsel  from  the  mouth  of  the  mother  and 
babe,  lest,  perchance,  some  crumb  thereof  reach  and  nourish  the  men  at 
the  front.  But  what  necessity  of  war,  except  that  brand  that  Sherman 
fathered  and  sponsored,  demanded  that  the  torch  follow  the  pillager, 
that  every  home  be  burned,  and  famishing  mother  and  babe  be  turned 
out  in  midwinter  to  die  of  cold  and  exposure? 

"But  didn't  'Sherman's  March'  shorten  the  war ;  didn't  it  shake  Lee's 
lines  around  Petersburg  when  his  men  knew  that  fire  and  rapine  were  in 
their  homes?"  is  sometimes  asked.  Doubtless.  And  it  might  have 
shaken  them  all  the  more  had  wives  and  babes  been  burnt  in  these  homes 
rather  than  left  to  starve  in  their  ruins.  It  might  have  been  not  only 
more  effective  but  more  merciful.  But  there  are  abysmal  depths  of 
atrocity  from  which  even  the  "hired  assassin"  recoils — that  is,  unless  he 


belongs  to  the  Attilas,  Alvas,  and  Shermans.  There  are  rules  of  civilized 
warfare  which  the  soldier  in  every  extremity  must  observe  or  else  have 
heaped  upon  him  the  execration  of  mankind. 

The  whole  world  shudders  at  the  robbery  and  partial  ruin  of  only  a 
part  of  Belgium.  Sherman  devastated  an  area  nearly  twice  as  great 
as  the  whole  of  Belgium,  and  devastated  it  utterly,  leaving  only  black- 
ened chimneys  and  starving  women  and  children  in  his  wake.  That  his 
hell  was  only  some  sixty  miles  wide  was  owing  to  no  lack  of  Satanic 
ferocity  on  his  part.  It  would  have  been  much  wider  had  not  Wheeler, 
with  his  handful  of  horse,  hung  close  to  Sherman's  flanks,  with  a  quick 
halter  for  every  marauder  he  caught  in  the  act.  Sherman's  little  finger 
was  heavier  than  the  whole  martial  first  of  the  Kaiser.  Belgium  was  a 
battle-ground — the  largest  and  fiercest  that  even  blood-soaked  Old  Mother 
Earth  ever  saw.  But  it  took  five  million  men  five  months  to  work  wreck 
and  ruin.  Sherman  did  it  overnight  with  sixty  thousand.  The  Kaiser 
found  at  least  a  potential  sniper  in  every  window ;  his  every  step  was  a 
battle.  Sherman  had  only  a  light  screen  of  cavalry  to  brush  aside,  and 
not  always  even  that. 

That  there  was  less  starvation  in  Sherman's  path  than  the  Kaiser's — 
though  many  a  high-born  Southern  lady  kept  life  in  her  children  for  the 
time  with  the  waste  corn  slobbered  from  the  mouths  of  the  Federal 
cavalry  and  artillery  horses — was  because  the  South  was  large  and  far 
less  densely  populated  than  Belgium,  and  that  the  victims  sought  shelter 
in  the  unravaged  regions  which  Wheeler  had  saved. 

Then  there  is  a  hideous  chapter  in  this  black  book  that  never  has  and 
never  will  he  written — so  hideous  that  even  the  South  has  been  fain  to 
draw  over  it  the  curtain  of  oblivion.  I  mean  the  violence  that  Southern 
women  suffered  at  the  hands  of  Sherman's  ruffians.  It  is  a  well-known 
fact,  and  by  none  better  known  than  by  military  men  themselves,  that 
men  herded  in  camps,  remoATed  from  the  restraints  of  home,  rapidly  tend 
to  relapse  towards  barbarism,  and  that  only  the  iron  hand  of  discipline 
can  hold  them  in  check.  Relax  that  discipline  in  one  respect,  sanction 
the  perpetration  of  one  crime,  and  all  crimes,  especially  the  crime  against 
woman,  follows  as  a  natural  sequence. 

Xo  one  who  lived  in  or  near  Sherman's  path  in  Georgia,  South  Caro- 
lina, or  even  in  this  State,  after  the  war  was  over  and  the  troops  march- 
ing for  disbandment  in  Washington,  can  lack  knowledge  of  cases  that 
came  to  light,  despite  every  effort  of  the  hapless  victims  themselves  to 
hide  them.  To  recall  only  the  cases  which  abide  with  me  most  vividly, 
that  came  practically  under  my  own  observation,  or  that  I  had  first-hand 
knowledge  of — the  beautiful  girl  to  whose  rescue  came  one  of  Wheeler's 
troopers,  and  who,  seized  and  used  as  a  shield  by  the  ruffian  who  had 
abused  her,  in  her  agonv  begged  the  trooper  to  shoot  through  her  body 
and  kill  him ;  but  by  a  dexterous  movement  the  brute  was  killed  over 
her  shoulder. 

The  cottage,  with  its  rose-covered  porch,  in  which  lived  the  young 
widow  and  her  three  daughters,  all  noted  for  their  beauty  and  refine- 


mentj  at  whose  door  a  band  of  Federal  troopers  drew  rein  at  dusk — the 
screams  and  sobs  that  all  the  live-long  night  the  neighbors  heard,  but 
dared  not  stir — the  tomblike  aspect  of  the  cottage,  with  no  smoke  from 
the  chimneys,  no  sign  of  life,  for  days  and  days  afterwards — the  deep 
grave  of  forgetfulness  that  the  sorrowing  neighborhood  dug  for  the  whole 
horrible  affair,  where  it  rests  this  day.  The  very  first  offense  of  a  negro 
against  a  white  woman  that  I  ever  heard  of  was  committed  in  this  neigh- 
borhood, in  April,  1865,  by  one  who  had  been  under  Sherman's  tutelage. 
What,  indeed,  was  the  saturnalia  of  crime  against  Southern  woman  for  a 
generation  afterwards  but  the  aftermath,  the  legacy,  of  that  foulest  blot 
on  American  history — Sherman's  vaunted  "March  to  the  Sea"  ? 

It  is  a  maxim  of  war,  as  it  is  of  common  sense,  that  the  higher  the 
rank  the  greater  the  fame  or  blame  for  any  given  act.  In  every  crime 
that  sprang  from  this  lack  of  discipline — and  no  one  can  question  that 
practically  all  did  so  spring — the  men  higher  up,  who  invited  the  crime 
by  lowering  the  bars  of  discipline,  were  worse  criminals  than  the  perpe- 
trators themselves.  Above  the  perpetrator  stood  the  commander  of  the 
army,  Sherman ;  above  Sherman  stood  the  commander-in-chief  of  all 
the  Federal  armies,  Abraham  Lincoln.  If  Lincoln  ever  discountenanced 
Sherman  and  his  methods,  he  never  gave  word  to  it,  and  he  was  a  man 
of  many  words. 

George  III.,  whom  we  were  reared  to  execrate  next  to  Satan,  and 
Lincoln,  whom  our  children  are  being  reared  to  venerate  almost  next  to 
God,  both  sent  armies  to  invade  the  South,  the  one  in  the  benighted 
eighteenth,  the  other  in  the  enlightened  nineteenth  century.  Surely 
the  character  and  conduct  of  the  tAvo  commanders  put  at  the  head 
of  these  invading  armies  must  be  some  indication  of  the  animus  of 
those  two  men  towards  the  South.  I  quote  first  from  Cornwallis's 
order  book,  various  dates  of  January,  February,  and  March,  1781,  show- 
ing him  to  have  been  more  careful  to  shield  noncombatants  from  the 
pettiest  theft  than  Sherman  was  to  save  them  from  the  blackest  crimes : 
"It  is  needless  to  point  out  to  officers  the  necessity  of  preserving  the 
strictest  discipline  and  of  preventing  the  oppressed  people  from  suffer- 
ing by  the  hands  of  those  from  whom  they  are  taught  to  look  for  protec- 
tion. Lord  Cornwallis  is  highly  displeased  that  several  houses  have 
been  set  on  fire  today  during  the  march — a  disgrace  to  the  army — and 
he  will  punish  with  the  utmost  severity  any  person  or  persons  found 
guilty  of  committing  so  disgraceful  an  outrage.  His  lordship  requests 
that  the  commanding  officers  of  the  corps  will  endeavor  to  find  the  per- 
sons who  set  fire  to  the  houses  this  day."  "Great  complaints  have  been 
made  of  negroes  straggling,  plundering,  and  using  violence.  No  negroes 
shall  be  suffered  to  carry  arms.  Provost  marshal  has  orders  to  shoot  on 
the  spot  any  negro  who  may  offend  against  these  regulations."  "Any 
officer  who  looks  on  and  does  not  do  his  utmost  to  prevent  shameful 
marauding  will  be  considered  in  a  more  criminal  light  than  the  person 
who  committed  these  scandalous  crimes."  "A  woman  having  been  robbed 
of  a  watch,  a  black  silk  handkerchief,  a  gallon  of  peach  brandy,  and 


a  shirt,  and,  by  the  description,  by  a  soldier  of  the  Guard,  every  man's 
kit  is  to  be  immediately  examined."  "All  foraging  parties  will  give 
receipts  for  the  supplies  taken  by  them."  In  one  instance  two  staff 
officers  were  actually  captured  because  they  had  remained  behind  to  pay 
for  supplies  requisitioned  for  the  invading  army. 

"A  watch  found  by  the  regiment  of  BOSE.  The  owner  may  have 
same  from  adjutant  on  proving  property."  "Immediate  inspection  of 
the  clothing  in  possession  of  the  women  is  to  be  made.  Their  clothing 
to  be  regularly  examined  at  proper  intervals  hereafter,  and  every  article 
found  in  addition  thereto  burned  at  the  head  of  the  company.  Officers 
are  ordered  to  make  this  examination  at  such  times  as  to  prevent  the 
women  (supposed  to  be  the  source  of  this  infamous  plundering)  from 
evading  the  purport  of  the  order." 

(Sherman's  majors  general  brought  their  harlots  along,  loaded  them 
with  stolen  jewelry,  and  desecrated  Southern  homes  with  them  overnight 
before  applying  the  torch  next  morning.) 

I  might  quote  at  great  length  the  British  commander's  restraining 
words  and  cite  instances  of  stronger  measures,  but  will  cite  only  one. 

After  Cornwallis's  virtual  defeat  at  Guilford  he  retreated  to  Wilming- 
ton, then  passed  northward  through  the  State  on  the  way  to  his  doom 
at  Yorktown,  Even  if  policy  rather  than  principle  had  influenced  him 
earlier  in  the  campaign,  it  could  have  had  little  weight  with  him  then, 
for,  as  he  well  knew,  the  game  was  lost.  While  at  Halifax  tidings 
reached  him  that  a  woman  had  suffered  at  the  hands  of  Tarleton's  troop- 
ers forming  his  advance  guard.  Taking  a  body-guard  of  only  one 
dragoon.  Cornwallis  spurred  forward  and  overtook  Tarleton  near  the 
present  town  of  Garysburg.  The  whole  command  was  halted  till  wit- 
nesses could  be  brought  up.  It  was  then  dismounted,  lined  up,  the  two 
offenders,  one  a  sergeant,  identified,  tried  by  drumhead  courtmartial, 
and  strung  up  to  the  nearest  tree. 

So  much  for  the  army  that  the  tyrant,  George  III.,  sent.  Eighty- 
four  years  later  the  superman,  Lincoln,  sent  an  army  along  much  the 
same  track.  The  object  of  both  armies  Avas  to  subdue  the  invaded 
region  and  win  it  back  to  their  respective  governments. 

The  tyrant  of  the  eighteenth  century,  as  we  have  seen,  sought  to  sub- 
due by  waging  honorable  warfare  against  combatants  and  protecting 
the  person  and  property  of  noncombatants. 

And  the  superman?  To  devastate  and  utterly  ruin  every  inch  of 
territory  that  the  far-flung  wings  of  his  great  army  could  compass,  a 
compass  limited  only  by  the  activity  of  the  Confederate  cavalry  on  its 
flanks. 

EA'en  then,  if  in  the  conflict  of  the  strong  North  against  the  weak 
South  such  cruel  measures  were  necessary,  if  the  occasion  demanded 
that  every  Southern  woman  and  child  that  could  be  reached  be  deprived 
of  food,  clothing,  and  shelter,  and  turned  out  in  midwinter,  it  does  seem 
that  this  superman  would  have  sent  the  sanest  and  humanest  of  all  his 
lieutenants  to  accomplish  this  fell  work — would  have  tempered  wrath 


with  mercy.  Instead,  he  sent  Sherman,  the  demoniac.  Charity  impels 
me  to  dub  him  only  demoniac,  possessed  of  a  demon,  rather  than  to 
believe  one  of  my  own  species  could  be  demon  outright.  Listen  at  his 
ravings  and  judge.  They  are  taken  at  random  from  his  orders  and 
reports,  and  whole  pages  could  be  filled  with  such  venomous  utterances  : 

"As  to  the  Kentucky  secessionists,  I  hope  General  Burbridge  will  send 
them  to  Dry  Tortugas  [a  sandy  island  of  insufferable  heat  and  glare 
south  of  Florida] — men,  women,  and  children — and  encourage  a  new 
breed." 

"Hang  a  few  secessionists  now  and  then." 

"I  am  going  into  the  very  bowels  of  the  Confederacy,  and  propose  to 
leave  a  trail  that  will  be  recognized  for  fifty  years/' 

'T  propose  to  sally  forth  to  ruin  Georgia,  and  expect  to  leave  a  hole 
that  will  be  hard  to  mend." 

"I  am  perfecting  arrangements  to  push  into  Georgia  and  make  deso- 
lation everywhere."     "I  will  make  Georgia  howl." 

"Arrest  all  people,  male  and  female,  and  let  them  foot  it  into  Mari- 
etta. Let  them  take  their  children  and  clothing,  provided  they  have 
means  of  hauling  them."  (Lacking  these  means,  the  only  inference  is 
that  both  were  to  be  left  behind.) 

"I  propose  to  march,  leaving  a  patch  of  desolation  behind." 

"I  will  see  that  Atlanta  is  utterly  ruined." 

And  like  master  like  man.  Small  wonder  that  Sherman's  underlings 
filled  every  item  down  the  long,  black  list  of  crime,  from  plain  stealing 
to  arson,  rape,  and  murder.  Lack  of  space  forbids  that  I  even  classify 
the  fiendishness — from  the  midnight  burning  of  towns,  driving  the  un- 
protected women  and  girls  into  the  streets  crowded  with  unrestrained 
soldiery,  to  slipping  the  quid  of  tobacco  into  the  pitiful  jug  of  sorghum, 
which  the  mother,  everything  else  destroyed,  had  saved  from  her  blazing 
home  and  held  desperately  to  as  the  last  bar  between  her  little  brood 
and  actual  starvation ;  the  spattering  of  the  little  tot  with  blood  as  the 
calf  was  shot  in  her  arms,  she  having  hugged  it  tight  to  save  it  from  the 
fate  of  horses,  cows,  sheep,  pigs,  and  poultry  shot  down  and  left  to  rot 
around  the  house. 

Decency  bars  me  from  more  than  hinting  at  the  wanton  and  studied 
befoulment  of  precious  heirlooms  and  sacred  things  before  applying  the 
torch,  and  all  the  insults  and  outrages  that  helpless  woman  has  to 
endure  from  brutal  man  when  the  clock  is  set  back  to  primeval  savagery. 
It  is  all-sufficing  to  say  that  as  a  rule  they  did  their  level  best  to  match 
with  their  own  black  deeds  their  leader's  black  words.  It  would  take  a 
pen  with  the  three-league  sweep  of  Kipling's  artist's  brush  in  the  here- 
after to  do  justice  to  the  breadth  and  depth  of  it  all — and  then  no  mind 
could  comprehend  it  all  and  retain  its  saneness. 

Sherman  apologists  (I  never  heard  of  his  having  a  defender)  have 
cited  the  liberal  terms  he  offered  Johnston  and  his  remonstrance  with 
the  Xorthern  politicians  as  to  their  treatment  of  the  South  after  the 
war  as  showing  that  he  was  not   all  black.     As  to  the  terms  offered 


Johnston,  I  would  say  that  that  was  all  a  matter  of  policy  in  which 
motives  of  humanity  might  and  might  not  have  had  a  part.  As  to  the 
other,  judging  the  man  by  his  deeds  and  knowing  his  animus  towards 
the  politician,  I  am  forced  to  suspect  that  his  motives  were  akin  to  those 
that  prompted  Macaulay's  Puritan  to  condemn  bear-baiting — not  that 
it  gave  pain  to  bear,  but  that  it  gave  pleasure  to  man.  Or  was  it, 
rather,  that,  like  the  hyena,  having  mangled  his  helpless  prey,  he  was 
jealous  of  the  jackal  pack? 

That  Lincoln  was  an  able  man,  of  many  amiable  qualities,  is  wholly 
beside  the  point.  The  colossal  public  crimes  of  history  were  committed 
by  men  altogether  amiable,  or  estimable,  or  both,  in  private  life.  Julius 
Caesar,  the  destroyer  of  ancient  liberty,  was  the  most  genial  and  com- 
panionable of  men.  Charles  the  First,  who  but  for  the  headsman  might 
have  destroyed  modern  liberty,  was  a  tender-hearted,  lovable  gentleman 
of  stainless  private  life,  as  was  Robespierre,  who  glutted  the  very  guillo- 
tine with  innocent  blood.  Who  could  out-cajole  Napoleon  or  Louis  the 
Fourteenth,  arch  enemies  of  mankind,  or,  as  to  that,  Satan  himself? 
Did  it  brighten  the  lot  of  the  shell-torn  inmates  of  Southern  hospitals  to 
know  that  the  maker  of  medical  and  surgical  supplies,  contraband  of 
war,  was  a  man  of  infinite  jest?  Were  the  skeletons  rotting  in  the 
vermin-encrusted  burrows  of  Andersonville,  or  freezing  in  the  icy  sheds 
of  Point  Lookout  and  Fort  Delaware,  helped  by  knowing  that  the  breaker 
of  the  cartel  could  not  abide  the  sight  of  misery?  Did  it  lessen  the 
sorrow  of  Southern  mothers,  who,  roof-trees  ablaze,  fled  with  their  little 
broods  to  the  wintry  woods  and  swamps,  to  know  that  the  hand  that 
swayed  the  besom  of  hell  always  rested  tenderly  on  the  head  of  his  own 
children?  Did  it  minish  the  agony  of  Southern  maidens,  writhing  in  the 
clutches  of  Sherman's  licentious  soldiery,  to  remember  that  the  one  at  the 
head  of  it  all  was  a  virtuous  man? 

Lincoln,  the  public  man — the  only  Lincoln  that  we  knew — was  the 
creature  of  the  Republican  Party — the  party  born  of  anti-Southernism, 
anti-Jeffersonism,  the  innate  and  truceless  foe  of  individual,  local  liberty, 
as  opposed  to  centralism,  imperialism. 

Did  Lincoln  ever  rise  a  hair's  breadth  above  his  party?  Is  there  a 
single  instance  in  which  he  failed  to  see  with  its  eyes,  act  with  its 
.spirit  ?  When,  during  the  opening,  progress,  or  close  of  the  war,  did  he 
display  that  greatness  of  mind  or  of  heart,  that  magnanimity,  that 
should  wrest  homage  from  even  a  vanquished  and  ruined  foe?  When 
or  where  was  he  other  than  the  incarnation  of  Republicanism? 

Shall  we  honor  him  for  the  dexterity,  not  to  say  duplicity,  with  which 
the  Peace  Commissioners,  the  able  men  whom  the  South  sent  to  Wash- 
ington in  March,  1861,  in  a  strenuous  endeavor  to  avert  war,  were  kept 
dangling,  while  in  violence  to  solemn  promise  the  secret  expedition  was 
prepared  and  despatched  to  reinforce  Sumter,  a  measure  so  close  akin 
to  perfidy  that  it  alarmed  and  enraged  the  South  and  precipitated  war? 

It  has  been  a  platitude  of  history  that  the  war  was  inevitable.  Like 
most  platitudes,  it  has  very  little  thought  back  of  it.     In  exact  propor- 


10 

tion  as  we  disentangle  the  skein  of  past  diplomacy  and  past  politics, 
in  the  same  degree  do  we  discern  that  few  if  any  wars  were  inevitable. 
In  public  no  less  than  in  private  life  the  soft  answer  turneth  away  wrath. 
At  one  touch  of  a  frank,  honest,  sympathetic  hand  the  most  sinister 
political  kaleidoscopes  in  history  have  instantly  assumed  benign  com- 
binations. 

But  that  is  all  by  the  way.  The  wisest  men  of  that  day  did  not  think 
war  inevitable.  Men  North  and  South  were  working  hard  for  peace. 
Lincoln's  words  and  actions  made  only  for  war.  How  different  was 
Washington's  action  in  Shay's  rebellion !  Not  waiting  for  overtures, 
he  took  the  initiative  and  appointed  a  commission  to  confer  with  the  mal- 
contents, and  thus  averted  bloodshed. 

Shall  we  honor  Lincoln  for  his  emancipation  proclamation?  The 
blackest  crime  laid  at  the  door  of  George  III.  was  that  he  unleashed 
a  handful  of  savages  against  our  frontiers.  Lincoln,  as  far  as  in  him 
lay,  unleashed  four  million  savages  (which  the  North  held  that  slavery 
had  converted  the  negro  into)  in  our  very  midst,  against  our  defenseless 
women  and  children.  To  the  good  feelings  existing  between  the  races 
we  chiefly  owe  that  the  horrors  of  St.  Domingo,  multiplied  ten  thousand- 
fold, were  not  repeated  at  the  South. 

Shall  we  honor  him  for  the  flagrant  breach  of  the  cartel,  and  the 
resulting  hells — Point  Lookout,  Fort  Delaware,  Johnson  Island,  Camp 
Morton,  Camp  Chase,  Rock  Island,  at  the  north;  Andersonville,  Belle 
Isle,  Salisbury  at  the  south,  and  many  more  prisons  in  each  Republic  ? 

Shall  we  honor  him  for  out-Kaisering  the  Kaiser  in  making  medical 
and  surgical  supplies  contraband  of  war,  thus  adding  still  lower  depths 
to  those  hells,  as  to  the  whole  war,  on  the  Southern  side  ? 

Shall  we  honor  him  for  Sherman's  Gargantuan  orgy  of  crime  in  Geor- 
gia and  South  Carolina,  and  for  the  vile  dregs  of  it  that  our  own  women 
had  to  drain  long  after  the  hostilities  ceased? 

Lincoln's  tragic  taking  off  naturally  caused  a  great  revulsion  of  feeling 
in  his  favor  at  the  South.  This  has  prompted  us  to  believe  that  had  he 
lived  the  Republican  lion  would  have  transfigured  itself  into  a  lamb  the 
moment  that 

"The  war  drums  ceased  from  throbbing 
And  the  battle  flags  were  furled." 

In  other  words,  that  mildness  and  benignancy  quite  angelic  would  have 
marked  the  reconstruction  period,  or  rather  there  would  have  been  no 
reconstruction  period  at  all,  but,  instead,  a  kind  of  family  reunion,  with 
Seward,  Ben  Wade,  and  Thad  Stevens  et  id  as  ecstatic  ushers. 

But  from  what  act  of  Lincoln's  do  we  find  justification  for  this  belief, 
or  rather  hope?  There  were  good  words  enow.  For,  statesman  as  he 
was,  Lincoln  was  first,  last,  and  always  the  politician,  seeking  the  public 
will  before  the  public  weal.  Not  by  words,  but  deeds,  must  a  man  be 
judged.  Words  are  the  politician's  stock  in  trade.  ''Deeds  proclaim 
the  man" ;  words  too  often  hide  him.     It  is  true  that  when  Richmond 


11 

fell  lie  authorized  the  calling  together  of  the  Virginia  Legislature.  But 
it  was  avowedly  because  he  believed  that  it  would  recall  the  Virginia 
troops  from  Lee's  retreating  army,  and  he  wished  to  give  opportunity  to 
do  so.  The  moment  that  Lee  surrendered  he  withdrew  the  permit,  and 
ordered  the  arrest  of  any  members  who  disobeyed  the  order  to  quit 
Richmond  promptly. 

It  is  far  more  likely  than  otherwise  that  Lincoln's  death  lightened 
the  heel  that  sought  to  grind  us  in  the  mire.  The  incarnation  of  Repub- 
licanism in  war,  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  reason  for  believing  that  in 
peace  he  could  have  thwarted  the  politicians  of  their  prey,  though  he 
would  no  doubt  have  deprecated  their  violence. 

Why,  pray,  should  he  who  shut  his  eyes  while  18,000  square  miles  of 
Southern  homes  were  being  Shermanized,  converted  into  a  hell  more 
vast  and  hideous  than  even  Milton's  imagination  ever  winged,  all  under 
plea  of  military  necessity,  have  been  less  pliant  when,  a  little  later, 
political  necessity  called?  Are  Southern  institutions  more  sacred  than 
Southern  women?  Does  the  South  set  a  greater  value  upon  her  politi- 
cal welfare  than  on  the  lives  of  her  children,  the  honor  of  her  women  ? 

The  Republican  politicians  were  bent  upon  the  utter  humiliation  and 
degradation  of  the  South ;  upon  forcing  on  her  civil  rights,  miscegenation, 
mongrelism.  Their  animus  is  shown  by  the  clash  with  Andy  Johnson, 
the  fierce  fight  against  even  the  stint  of  justice  that  a  renegade  would 
fain  have  accorded  the  land  of  his  birth.  So  fraught  was  their  attitude 
to  the  South  with  malice  prepense  that  they  in  a  measure  overreached 
themselves,  and  brought  about  a  partial  reaction  of  feeling  among  the 
Xorthern  people  at  large.  Then  the  scrimmage  with  Johnson  distracted 
their  attention.  He  got  many  a  blow  that  would  otherwise  have  fallen 
on  our  defenseless  head.  Under  Lincoln,  their  methods  would  almost 
surely  have  been  less  violent,  but  probably  far  more  systematic  and 
insidious.  Davis  might  not  have  been  imprisoned,  or  not  so  long,  or 
Wirz,  the  commandant  of  Andersonville  prison,  executed.  But  in  all 
likelihood  a  more  furtive,  deadly  way  would  have  been  found  to  work 
our  undoing.  When  thieves  fall  out  honest  men  thrive,  and  that  is 
about  the  only  chance  they  do  get  to  thrive. 

The  man  to  whom  is  really  due  the  gratitude  of  the  South  is  Grant. 
Had  he  not  scotched  the  plan  of  the  Republicans  to  punish  the  Southern 
military  leaders,  by  threatening  to  throw  up  his  commission  if  Lee  was 
arrested,  there  is  no  telling,  the  gates  of  vengeance  once  ajar,  when  they 
would  ever  have  closed. 

Turning  from  Lincoln  the  Republican  to  Lincoln  the  man.  Is  the 
wily,  not  to  say  tricky,  politician,  the  reveler  in  "smutty"  jokes,  the 
Southern  ideal  ?  Lack  we,  of  our  own  kith  and  kind,  of  our  own  house- 
hold of  faith,  great  men  who  were  also  great  gentlemen  ?  Are  we  so 
poor  in  heroes  that  we  must  needs  pedestal  the  man  who  led  his  sections 
somewhat  bunglingly,  it  is  true,  but  without  ruth  or  remorse  in  the 
onslaught  that  virtually  destroyed  ours  ? 

Again,  is  there  anything  in  the  achievement  of  Lincoln  so  dazzling 


12 

that  it  should  blind  us  to  everything  else  ?  Is  there  glory  for  the  strong 
in  overcoming  the  weak,  the  many  the  few  ?  Would  we  ever  have  heard 
of  Goliath,  Xerxes,  Darius,  and  all  their  like,  had  they  won  ?  Such  im- 
mortality that  they  won  is  reflected  from  the  foes  they  faced,  weaker 
but  of  better  mettle. 

In  years  to  come  the  case  of  the  South  and  the  North  will  be  cited 
as  the  crowning  instance  of  the  tyranny  of  the  pen.  The  American 
colonies,  equal  sisters,  finding  themselves  aggrieved  by  certain  unmoth- 
erly  measures  of  the  mother  country,  a  mother  too  far  off  to  harm  them 
greatly,  and  in  fact  harming  only  their  pocket,  and  that  slightly,  yet 
made  war  on  her,  the  author  of  their  being,  beat  her  and  set  up  for 
themselves,  calling  high  heaven  to  witness  that  "Governments  derive 
their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed." 

Now,  some  malign  power  had  laid  upon  all,  or  about  all,  of  these 
sister  colonies  a  great  burden,  a  great  curse  (negro  slavery),  disguised 
as  a  blessing,  but  upon  part  of  them  more  heavily  than  others.  The 
sisters  lightly  afflicted  were  able  to  free  themselves  of  this  curse  not 
only  without  scathe,  but  with  actual  profit,  by  shifting  their  portion  of 
it  upon  those  sisters  sorely  afflicted  to  helplessness. 

Then  straightway  the  free  sisters,  seing  how  trammeled  and  helpless 
the  burdened  sisters  were,  not  only  robbed  their  pockets  by  iniquitous 
tariff  laws  which  bore  heaviest  on  one  section,  but,  what  was  infinitely 
worse,  they  turned  their  quacks  (the  abolitionists)  loose  on  them  with 
their  nostrums,  defeating  all  the  practical  efforts  of  the  burdened  sisters 
to  cure  themselves.  Finally,  forced  thereto  by  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation,  the  first  law  of  nature,  the  burdened  sisters,  now  expanded 
into  a  domain  larger  than  the  whole  at  the  beginning,  and  three  times 
as  populous,  took  steps  to  save  themselves,  to  be  rid  of  the  persecuting 
sisters.  But  these  steps  were  far  more  deliberate,  more  orderly,  and 
far  more  conciliatory  than  those  taken  with  the  mother  country  at  the 
Revolution. 

With  all  solemnity,  observing  every  form  of  law  and  diplomacy,  they 
declared  their  independence  by  withdrawing  from  the  Union,  as  the 
persecuting  sisters  had,  under  infinitely  less  provocation,  repeatedly 
threatened  to  do ;  and,  when  driven  to  the  wall,  turned  and  defended 
this  "inalienable  right,"  that  "Governments  derive  their  just  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed,"  with  a  courage  and  devotion  that 
never  has  been  surpassed. 

That  their  appeal  to  the  sword  should  have  been  lost  is  no  wonder. 
The  SAVord  has  ever  been  the  slave  of  might. 

But  that  a  people  who  so  long  withstood  the  sword  of  the  North  should 
have  surrendered  so  quickly,  so  cravenly,  to  its  pen,  must  forever  stand 
the  wonder  of  the  world.  It  will  be  incredible  that  an  intelligent,  high- 
spirited  people,  a  people  showing  in  every  other  respect  mental  and 
moral  fiber  of  the  most  robust  order,  should  have  been  transfigured  into 
such  groveling  thralls  that  they  not  only  forswore  the  high,  expressive, 
and  honorable  name  of  the  struggle  given  by  their  fathers,  "The  War 


13 

for  Southern  Independence/'  but  came  to  see  only  wild  political  folly, 
maduess,  in  the  sane  and  heroic  endeavors  of  the  fathers  to  establish  and 
maintain  a  republic  suited  to  the  genius  of  the  Southern  people,  one  in 
which  issues  the  most  portentous  that  ever  faced  any  people  could  have 
been  settled  by  these  people  themselves  and  not  by  the  arbitrary  and 
hostile  power  of  an  alien  people,  or  rather  left  unsettled,  and  in  such  a 
posture  that,  like  Banquo's  ghost,  it  would  never  down. 

The  compromise  name,  "War  Between  the  States,"  which  our  perhaps 
overcautious  leaders  thought  best  to  use  while  the  South  still  had  her 
head  in  the  lion's  mouth,  was,  as  they  must  have  known,  a  clear  mis- 
nomer. But  a  misnomer,  a  wrong  name,  they  doubtless  held,  was  better 
than  a  bad  one,  better  than  the  name  rebellion  with  all  its  load  of  oppro- 
brium and  reproach. 

Nevertheless,  whatever  the  war  was,  it  was  not  a  war  between  the 
States.  The  States,  as  States,  took  no  part  in  it,  were  not  even  known 
in  it.  It  Avas  a  war  between  two  thoroughly  organized  governments  and 
for  one  great  principle,  that  completely  overshadowed  all  others — South- 
ern Independence.  To  the  Northern  mind  the  struggle  of  the  South  to 
reassert  the  cardinal  principle  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  that 
all  men  are  entitled  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  was 
rebellion ;  to  the  Southern  mind  it  was  not. 

To  every  patriotic  Southerner,  War  for  Southern  Independence  should 
be  a  sacred  name.  It  is  the  name  hallowed  by  the  lips  of  the  men  who 
died  to  make  it  a  reality. 

To  all  of  us,  from  Jeff.  Davis  and  Zeb.  Vance  down  to  the  smallest 
"shaver"  who  waved  his  home-made  straw  hat  to  a  frazzle  as  the  soldier 
trains  rolled  by,  it  was  the  "War  for  Southern  Independence";  never  a 
war  between  the  States.  To  the  thousands  who  died  that  the  name  might 
live,  who  breathed  out  their  gallant  lives  amid  the  smoke  and  dead-fallen 
air  of  battle",  or  who,  braver  still,  starving  in  Northern  prisons,  surren- 
dered to  the  fell  Sergeant  Death  rather  than  to  the  wiles  of  the  captor 
who  offered  the  renegade  everything,  it  was  always,  everywhere,  the  War 
for  Southern  Independence.  They  never  believed  they  were  dying  in 
a  mere  squabble  between  States,  but  to  achieve  Southern  Independence; 
to  erect  a  great  Southern  Republic,  under  whose  golden  asgis  Southern 
civilization  would  flower  into  the  glory  and  envy  of  the  whole  world. 

It  is  treason,  rank  treason,  to  their  memory  for  us  to  dub  it  otherwise. 

"What  is  History  But  a  Lie  Agkeed  Upon?" — Napoleon. 

In  the  first  edition  of  the  foregoing  part  of  this  brochure  I  endeavored 
to  reach  the  Southern  people  through  my  usual  channel,  the  Southern 
press.  To  my  very  great  astonishment  I  found  it  closed  to  me.  Editors 
who  for  nearly  forty  years  had  met  me  more  than  half  way  for  copy 
(my  pen,  since  as  a  young  man  I  gave  up  a  remunerative  career  as  a 
magazine  writer,  has  been  devoted  to  the  defense  of  the  ideals  and  as- 
pirations of  the  Old  South)  now  slammed  the  door  in  my  face.     Thus 


14 

was  I  driven  to  appeal  to  Caesar,  to  appeal  in  pamphlet  form  from  the 
Southern  press  to  the  Southern  people. 

Their  response  has  been  most  cordial,  showing  that  whatever  the 
Southern  press  may  be,  the  Southern  people  themselves  are  patriotic. 
But  men  and  women  pass;  the  printed  word  endures.  What  the  papers 
are  today  the  people  must  be  tomorrow  or  the  day  after. 

"But  for  Lincoln's  influence  you  might  not  here  and  now  dare  to 
write  as  freely  as  you  do"  is  the  gist  of  some  of  the  editorial  criticism 
my  paper  has  met.  though  it  was  a  layman  who  expressed  it  in  those 
words. 

I  submit  that  it  is  high  time  that  the  patriotic  men  and  women  of  this 
generation  register  a  most  emphatic  protest  against  the  attitude  of  a 
part  of  the  press  and  people  before  it  is  too  late. 

Did  we  need  just  what  we  got  in  the  sixties,  and  ought  we  to  be 
shouting  glad  we  got  it  ? 

Shades  of  the  Fathers !  We,  of  the  purest  strain  of  the  stock  that 
gave  freedom  to  the  world ;  we,  from  whose  very  loins  sprang  the  archi- 
tect, the  builder  and  the  defender  of  American  liberty — we,  so  poor  in 
statecraft,  so  bankrupt  in  morality,  that  an  alien  must  needs  come  with 
three  million  at  his  back,  and  with  fire,  sword,  and  rapine  save  us  from 
ourselves !  Yet  such  is  the  logical,  the  inescapable  deduction  from  the 
premises  our  children  will  be  taught  to  accept ! 

The  Xorth,  flinging  to  us  the  dross  of  physical  prowess  and  purblind 
devotion  to  a  fallacious  cause,  has  arrogated  to  herself  the  gold  of  moral 
rectitude  and  political  infallibility.  We  bave  been  taught,  and  are 
tamely  accepting  the  dictum  that  the  South,  when  she  lost  hold  on  the 
motherly  apron  strings,  when  she  foolisbly  ventured  from  under  the 
aegis  of  Northern  protection,  relapsed  SAviftly  towards  despotism  and 
anarchy,  and  that  Appomattox  alone  saved  us  from  political  disinte- 
gration ! 

Is  this  true?  Do  we  alone  deserve  the  odium  of  being  the  one  branch 
of  the  race  too  weak  to  frame  civil  institutions  that  could  stand  the 
crucible  of  war  ?  The  Bomans,  the  sanest  and  most  practical  political 
people  the  world  has  ever  seen,  always  when  the  ship  of  state  was  in 
peril,  put  a  dictator  at  the  helm. 

"Inter  Anna  Leges  Silent." 

In  the  clash  of  arms,  law  was  silent,  suspended.  Brivate  right,  pri- 
vate wrong,  had  to  wait  until  the  foe  was  vanquished  and  Borne  safe. 

Borne,  when  beset  the  hardest,  never  faced  the  disadvantages,  and 
was  rarely  ever  in  the  extremity  that  the  Confederacy  stood  from  be- 
ginning to  end.  ISTever  in  any  land  was  there  direr  need  that  a  hand, 
strong,  arbitrary,  untrammeled  by  peace-built  law  and  usage,  garner- 
ing every  man,  every  resource,  should  strike  as  one  at  the  Giant  Foe. 

Yet  was  there  a  dictatorship  at  the  South,  or  any  semblance  of  one? 
Did  war  submerge  law?  It  is  a  maxim  of  our  race.  Free  speech,  free 
press,  free  land.  Tyranny  ever  chains  first  the  tongue,  strikes  her  first 
blow  at  the  palladium  of  liberty — free  utterance. 


15 

Eight  here  in  Xorth  Carolina  the  Confederate  Government  had  its 
fullest  swing.  The  State  lay  nearer  to  Richmond  (and  distance,  owing 
to  crude  transportation  facilities,  was  a  far  more  formidable  thing  then 
than  now)  than  any  other  State  as  largely  free  from  invasion.  It  af- 
fords a  fair  instance  of  the  contact  of  the  Confederate  Government  with 
the  civil  life  of  the  people. 

Now,  living  evidence  is  still  abundant  that  no  man  was  molested  for 
opinion's  sake  or  for  word  spoken.  That  the  press  remained  unmuzzled, 
the  files  of  the  Ealeigh  Standard,  which  to  the  very  end  preached  stark 
treason  to  the  Confederacy,  stands  in  everlasting  evidence. 

Governor  Vance  of  Xorth  Carolina  and  Governor  Brown  of  Georgia, 
though  patriotic  men,  seeing  fit,  even  in  extremity,  to  place  State  rights 
and  other  considerations  before  Confederate  success,  hampered  the  Con- 
federate executive  to  a  degree  never  before  or  since  tolerated  under  such 
circumstances.  It  is  true  that  the  impressment  and  conscription  meas- 
ures were  grievous  burdens,  especially  here  in  such  close  reach ;  but 
they  were  laws  of  the  Congress,  and  not  the  fiat  of  the  executive.  In 
short,  much  of  the  defensive  power  of  the  South  was  lost  by  the  fail- 
ure of  President  Davis  to  Avield  the  full  measure  of  power  that  would 
readily  have  been  acquiesced  in  by  the  people  at  large.  Never,  not  even 
in  the  greatest  crises,  did  Jefferson  Davis  exercise  one-tenth  the  domi- 
nance over  the  Confederate  Congress  that  Woodrow  Wilson  now  does 
over  the  Federal.  Davis's  decrease  of  popularity  towards  the  end  came 
from  no  abuse  of  power  on  his  part,  but  mainly  from  the  stigma  which 
the  world  attaches  to  failure — that  is,  except  in  case  of  the  soldier. 
Around  him  war  flings  a  saving  halo. 

Let  us  glance  at  the  other  side  of  the  picture — at  the  status  of  the 
civilian  of  the  North.  The  Federal  Government,  infinitely  superior  in 
resources,  had  not  the  same  urgent  need  for  unity.  Yet  we  find  its 
actions  immeasurably  more  arbitrary  than  those  of  the  Confederate  Gov- 
ernment. Xot  under  the  old  regime  in  France  were  lettres  de  cachet  as 
plentiful  or  more  potent.  It  was  a  well-known  boast  of  Stanton,  Sec- 
retary of  War.  that  he  could  touch  a  bell  on  his  table  and  order  the  in- 
stant arrest  of  any  man  in  the  Union.  Fort  McHenry  at  Baltimore, 
Fort  LaFayette  at  New  York,  Fort  Warren  in  Boston  Harbor,  and  the 
old  Capitol  Prison  at  Washington,  became  veritable  bastiles,  crammed 
Avith  political  prisoners,  men  immured  for  what  they  had  said  or  for 
what  it  was  suspected  they  might  say  or  do.  In  the  old  Capitol  Prison, 
at  least,  executions  were  frequent. 

Xever  imposed  Fat.1  a  heavier  burden  on  any  people  than  on  the 
South  when  she  was  made  the  ladder  on  which  the  benighted  African 
must  climb  to  civilization  and  Christianity.  Xot  the  opprobrium,  but 
the  profound  sympathy  of  the  whole  world,  and  especially  of  the  Ne- 
gro himself,  is  our  just  due ;  for  never,  since  time  began,  has  a  race 
climbed  from  darkness  to  light  so  swiftly  and  at  so  small  a  price  to 
itself — at  such  fearful  cost  to  the  instrument  of  its  elevation. 

As  is  well  known,  slavery  was  no  Southern  indigene ;  no  plant  that 


16 

grew  here  only.  It  was  only  the  inheritance  of  the  ages.  Sanctioned 
by  immemorial  and  universal  usage,  and  even  by  Holy  Writ  itself,  it 
was  indeed  the  very  oldest  of  all  human  institutions.  Founded  origi- 
nally, in  part  at  least,  upon  morality,  upon  the  pity  which  spared  in- 
stead of  slaying  the  captive,  it  thus  became  the  bedrock  of  all  civiliza- 
tion. But  slavery  in  this  land,  and  at  that  date,  was  a  thing  strangely 
out  of  place  and  out  of  time.  So  much  so,  indeed,  that  one  wonders  as  to 
Fate's  motive  in  the  misplacement.  Did  a  spirit  of  impish  irony  impel 
her,  or  was  she  actuated  by  a  deeper  motive,  when  she  dropped  this  Old 
World  estray,  this  foundling  in  the  cradle  of  liberty,  the  ISTew  World — 
the  motive  that  as  we 

"Broadened  with  the  act  of  Freedom'" 

we  should  also 

"Grow  strong  beneath  the  weight  of  duty"? 

Slavery  Avould  surely  have  gone,  even  had  Lincoln  never  been  born. 
The  drift  of  the  world  had  set  against  it,  deep  and  resistless.  Harking 
back  two  thousand  years  to  Epictetus,  it  had  come  to  see  that  not  to 
him  who  getteth,  but  to  him  who  doeth  a  wrong,  cometh  the  chief  harm. 
Emancipation  was  inevitable,  and  to  hold  that  the  Southern  people,  the 
purest-blooded  branch  of  the  sane  and  virile  Anglo-Saxon  race,  the  race 
which  gave  liberty  to  the  world,  and  which  in  all  lands  and  under  all 
conditions  bad  stood  for  justice  and  fair  play,  as  it  came  to  see  it — for 
us  to  hold  that  this,  our  branch,  would  have  been  so  degenerate,  so 
recreant  to  the  genius  and  spirit  of  the  stock,  so  inferior  to  its  forbears, 
or  even  to  the  "lesser  breeds"  to  the  south  of  us  that  did  put  it  by,  that 
it  lacked  the  manhood  to  free  itself  from  the  incubus  of  slavery,  is  a 
worse  slander  than  even  our  foes  would  dare  put  upon  us. 

It  is  argued,  and  by  our  own  writers  as  well  as  others,  that  the  slave- 
holding  class  dominated  the  South,  and  that  self-interest,  cupidity,  would 
always  have  impelled  this  class  to  block  emancipation.  I  would  reply 
that  slavery  in  divers  forms  was  long  an  institution  with  our  race ;  but 
that  the  race  in  its  progress  put  it  by,  despite  the  strenuous  opposition 
of  the  slave-holding  class — as  it  must  have  done  in  this  case.  The 
Avhole  moral  trend  of  the  race  rendered  any  other  course  impossible. 
The  fact  that  medieval  serf  was  white  and  strong,  and  the  modern  slave 
black  and  weak,  would  undoubtedly  have  made  the  work  of  emancipation 
harder ;  but  the  race  is  morally  stronger  now  than  then. 

There  is  one  fact  generally  overlooked,  which  would  have  added  greatly 
to  the  practicability  of  emancipation.  That  was  the  fact  that  the  slave- 
holding  classes  at  the  South  were  in  a  minority  of  about  six  to  one. 
Every  reform,  social  or  political,  that  our  race  has  achieved  has  been 
in  the  face  of  a  wealthy  minority  far  stronger  than  that.  In  fact,  it  is 
almost  a  truism  of  our  politics  that  the  people,  as  opposed  to  aristocracy, 
always  win  in  the  long  run.  No  civilization  has  survived  in  which  the 
rule  did  not  hold.  The  chief  reason  that  the  dust  covers  so  many  of  the 
splendid  civilizations  of  the  past  was  because  the  great  mass  of  the  peo- 


17 

pie  remained  inert  to  the  end.  The  broadening  of  the  franchise  right 
here  in  North  Carolina  in  the  fifties,  whereby  the  aristocratic  dominance 
of  the  State  Senate  was  abolished,  is  significant  proof  of  what  the  mid- 
dle-class manhood  of  that  generation  were  capable  of. 

One  thing  is  certain :  Had  the  negro  remained  in  our  midst  the 
South  would  have  avoided  the  irretrievable  error  of  the  North  in  mak- 
ing the  slave  a  citizen  first  and  a  man  afterwards.  As  emancipation 
would  have  been  gradual,  so  also  would  have  been  the  elevation  of  the 
freedmen.  As  he  attained  the  full  stature  of  manhood,  so  he  must  per- 
force have  been  invested  with  the  rights  and  privileges  of  a  man.  But  he 
hardly  would  have  remained.  Colonization  being  impracticable  at  that 
late  period,  segregation  would  probably  have  been  the  solution  of  the 
race  problem.  Even  in  this  sanctimonious  age  we  exclude  the  Asiatic. 
Where  would  have  been  the  sin  in  settling  the  African  in  a  prescribed 
area  of  the  country,  and  excluding  him  from  the  other  parts  of  it? 
Compared  with  the  Yellow  peril,  the  Black  peril  is  Olympus  to  a  wart. 

Some  degrees  of  wrong  and  injustice  there  might  have  been.  Wrong 
and  injustice  are  not  often  absent  from  the  affairs  of  this  world.  But 
who  is  bold  enough  to  assert  that  the  measure  of  them  could  have 
equaled,  or  even  distantly  approached,  that  infinitude  of  injustice  and 
of  wrong — that  orgy  of  political  madness — reconstruction,  whos  >  blight- 
ing effect  was  to  distract  and  stunt,  perhaps  forever,  the  development 
of  the  negro,  and  to  sow,  as  far  as  the  hand  of  malice  could  sow,  the 
very  salt  of  annihilation  over  the  civilization  and  life  of  the  South  ? 

As  is  well  known,  the  emancipation  movement  in  its  earlier,  saner 
stages  had  its  warmest  and  ablest  supporters  at  the  South.  Washing- 
ton, Jefferson,  Henry,  Madison,  and  the  foremost  men  of  that  time 
sought  earnestly  for  some  practicable  method  of  putting  an  end  to  slav- 
ery, which  was  generally  regarded  as  a  curse,  and  especially  so  to  the 
whites.  But  for  the  perfectly  natural  reaction  caused  by  the  rabid, 
incendiary  methods  of  the  abolitionists,  which,  beginning  about  1830, 
flowered  so  quickly  and  hideously  in  the  Nat  Turner  butchery  of  white 
women  and  children,  gradual  emancipation  would  soon  have  been  un- 
der way,  and  would  almost  surely  have  ended  slavery  with  that  cen- 
tury. I  would  not  deny  that  the  development  of  cotton  growing  caused 
by  the  perfection  of  the  cotton  gin,  and  the  resulting  enormous  increase 
in  slave  values,  would  have  made  emancipation  a  tremendous  problem. 
But  sphinxes — political,  social,  industrial,  moral,  religious,  racial — had 
lined  the  pathway  of  our  race  down  the  ages.  All  had  been  answered, 
and,  we  believe,  answeivd  right,  by  the  communities  which  had  most  at 
stake. 

To  our  branch  alone  was  denied  the  priceless  boon  of  answering  for 
themselves  the  most  momentous  problem  of  them  all,  a  problem  that  in- 
volves not  only  our  prosperity,  but  our  very  existence,  and  which  now 
can  only  deepen  and  darken  with  the  passage  of  the  centuries.  Were 
our  immediate  forbears — the  men  whose  courage  and  heroism  in  war 
placed  the  Lost  Cause  in  fame's  eternal  keeping,  whose  fortitude  and 


18 

sagacity  triumphed  even  over  reconstruction,  who  hurled  back  the  en- 
venomed dart,  negro  suffrage,  upon  the  heads  that  sent  it — weaklings, 
men  whose  destiny  was  safer  in  the  hands  of  an  alien  and  hostile  sec- 
tion than  in  their  own?     Perish  thought  so  blasphemous! 

How  few  of  us,  too,  have  ever  analyzed  the  famous  Emancipation 
Proclamation;  have  ever  tried  to  ascertain  the  proportions  of  politics, 
diplomacy,  and  philanthropy  couched  therein ;  have  ever  regarded  its 
true  purport  and  bearings.  Did  it  free,  or  seek  to  free,  all  the  slaves  in 
the  land?  Oh,  no!  Only  a  part.  What  part?  Those  in  the  hands  of 
Lincoln's  enemies.  Those  within  the  Union  lines,  those  in  the  hands  of 
friends,  were  not  affected  by  the  proclamation.  They  remained  in  bond- 
age so  far  as  this  instrument  was  concerned.  Lincoln  had  been  dead 
nearly  a  year  before  total  abolition  was  legally  brought  about.  Outside 
of  the  punitive  intent,  the  prime  motive  of  the  proclamation  was,  first, 
to  buttress  the  Republican  Party  against  the  rising  tide  of  Democracy; 
second,  the  Union  arms  against  those  of  the  Confederacy.  The  military 
end  sought  was  to  weaken  his  enemies  by  destroying  their  property. 
Naturally,  he  struck  at  their  chief  asset — their  slaves.  If  he  had  been 
able  thereby  to  destroy  any  or  all  of  other  kinds  of  their  property  he 
would  have  done  so.  If  his  simple  mandate  would  have  cut  the  throat 
of  every  work  animal,  milch  cow,  fired  every  roof-tree,  and  imperiled  the 
honor  of  every  woman  in  the  South,  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  he 
would  have  withheld  its  utterance;  for  it  was  his  word  that  sent  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  through  the  South  to  do  these  very  things. 

If  we  must  accept  subjugation,  even  of  mind  and  of  spirit;  if  we  must 
view  the  whole  bloody  drama  through  the  eyes  of  our  enemies ;  if  wTe 
must  believe  that  the  blow  came  from  above  and  not  below ;  that  we 
not  only  richly  deserved,  but  sadly  needed  just  what  we  got — then  the 
right  men  to  honor  are  the  pioneer  abolitionists,  Garrison,  Wendell  Phil- 
lips. Gerrit  Smith,  and  men  of  that  feather.  They  boldly  stood  for  abo- 
lition, when  to  stand  meant  hatred,  contempt,  and  imminent  peril  of 
life  and  limb.  These  men  had  no  ulterior  motives.  They  breasted  the 
tide  of  fortune.  Lincoln  floated  upon  it.  If  honor  we  must  the  sowers 
of  the  wind  whose  fearful  whirlwind  we  had  to  reap,  let's  honor  these, 
the  real  heroes  of  the  cataclysm.  True,  they  sent  John  Brown  pikes  to 
butcher  us  with ;  but  they  were  perfectly  willing  to  be  butchered  them- 
selves in  the  same  cause. 

Xo  one  would  deny  that  Lincoln  was  an  enemy  of  slavery.  He  was 
a  product  of  a  class  and  of  an  environment  that  drew  in  hatred  of  slav- 
ery and  of  slave-holders  with  every  breath.  Moreover,  most  thinking 
people,  North  and  South,  were  enemies  of  slavery  in  theory.  With 
Lincoln  and  the  North  it  was  only  a  theory.  With  the  South  it  was  a 
fact,  a  grim  fact  which,  foisted  upon  us  by  English  and  later  by  North- 
ern greed,  time  had  now  riveted  upon  us.  The  growth  was  cancerous. 
Bnt  would  you  go  to  your  butcher  to  remove  even  a  cancer? 

Emancipation  at  the  time,  and  in  the  manner  in  which  Lincoln  sought 
to  enforce  it.  was  a  politico-military  measure,  and  nothing  else.   1862  was 


19 

election  year.  Lincoln,  great  man  and  statesman  as  he  undoubtedly  was, 
was  also  politician  to  the  core.  And  when  did  your  politician,  big  or 
little,  ever  fail  to  trim  his  sails  to  the  wind — to  save  the  party  and  then 
let  the  party  save  everything  else  ?  Federal  arms  had  sustained  such  re- 
peated and  disastrous  defeats  that  Northern  opinion  was  turning  to  the 
Democratic  Party,  which  favored  peace.  Defeat  stared  Republicanism 
in  the  face.  Something  must  be  done  to  stem  the  tide.  The  emancipa- 
tion proclamation  was  the  answer.  While  primarily  a  political  move, 
great  things  were  also  expected  of  it  in  a  military  way.  It  was  largely 
believed  that  the  slaves  would  rise  and  deal  with  Southern  women  in  a 
way  that  would  cause  the  Southern  armies  to  crumble  in  a  day,  as  each 
man  rushed  home  to  save  his  own. 

As  a  military  measure  it  was  the  fiasco  of  the  ages.  Not  a  slave  stirred 
or  lifted  hand.  But  its  political  effect  was  immense.  It  instantly 
brought  into  the  Republican  camp  every  cohort  of  abolitionism,  and 
held  all  in  line  to  the  end,  though  these  lines  bent  fearfully  under  Jack- 
son's blows  at  Chancellorsville,  and  again,  when  soon  after  the  grey 
columns  surged  northward  to  Gettysburg,  and  even  when,  much  later 
still,  Grant's  army  recoiled  in  temporary  paralysis  from  the  futile  as- 
saults on  Lee  in  the  Wilderness. 

Still,  this  is  not  an  attack  on  Lincoln,  nor  do  I  seek  to  revive  section- 
alism, further  than  consistency  and  self-respect  demand.  I  am  well 
aware  that  patriotism  is  a  matter  of  geography.  That  all  depends  upon 
the  side  of  the  line  on  which  you  were  born.  But  so,  also,  is  renegadeism. 
High  moral  law  demands  that  we  be  true  to  our  fellows,  our  surround- 
ings. The  Washington s  and  Lees  obeyed  it.  The  Arnolds  and  Iscariots 
defied  it.  This  is  simply  an  earnest  protest  against  accepting  as  a 
Southern  hero,  a  Southern  exemplar,  a  man,  no  matter  how  worthy  per- 
sonally, who  was  a  leader  of  Northernism,  and  of  Northernism  in  its 
attitude  of  implacable  hostility  to  the  South  and  Southern  ideals.  It 
is  natural  that  the  Negro  should  honor  Lincoln.  He  gave  the  Negro 
freedom.  And  the  North:  he  gave  the  North  dominion  over  the  South. 
He  carried  out  Northern  ideals  of  centralism,  imperalism.  The  South- 
ern ideal.  State  rights,  home  rule,  the  palladium  the  world  over  of  the 
Aveak,  met  destruction  at  his  hands.  With  glaring  inconsistency,  we  still 
hold  the  ideal  to  be  true,  while  paying  homage  to  the  chief  instrument  of 
its  destruction. 

"Suppose  the  South  had  won?  What  then?"  is  the  common  query, 
usually  in  tones  of  utter  deprecation.  I  would  reply  that  the  South 
lost ;  what  then  ?  The  blackest  page  in  the  annals  of  our  race !  Would 
the  Lees,  the  Davises,  the  Hamptons,  the  Vances,  the  Grahams,  the 
Ashes,  the  Grimeses,  the  Clarks,  the  Jarvises,  the  Hills,  the  Carrs,  the 
Ransoms,  the  Averys,  have  been  less  fit  to  deal  with  even  the  tremendous 
issues  left  by  war  than  the  Sewards,  the  Wades,  the  Stevenses,  the 
Holdens,  the  Tourgees,  the  Deweeses,  the  Cuffees,  who  fumbled  them  till, 
with  an  effort  that  paralyzed  all  other  endeavors  for  a  generation,  we 
wrenched  the  helm  from  their  hand. 


20 

The  War  of  1861,  notwithstanding  the  unfortunate  slavery  compli- 
cation, was  as  much  a  war  of  liberty  as  that  of  1775,  or  that  of  1642 
in  the  Mother  country.  It  was  a  struggle  for  local  self-government 
against  centralism  and  all  the  evils  that  have  skulked  in  its  shadow, 
monopoly,  trusts,  extortion  in  its  protean  guises.  A  quicker  exploita- 
tion of  our  resources — and  a  quicker  destruction — has  undoubtedly  en- 
sued. But  where  has  the  wealth  gone?  Would  not  those  resources" be 
safer  in  the  hands  of  nature  than  in  the  hands  that  now  hold  and  use 
them  as  a  lever  to  oppress  and  extort  ? 

The  war,  waged  for  State  rights,  for  local  self-government,  the  prin- 
ciple for  which  the  flower  of  our  manhood  laid  down  their  lives,  was 
the  half-conscious  effort  of  our  branch  of  the  race — the  branch  that 
events  have  proven  to  have  had  the  keenest  political  instincts  of  all — to 
avert  this  torrent  of  evils;  some  then  plainly  disclosed  to  our  clear  vis- 
ion, some  even  now  just  emerging  from  the  haze  of  the  days  to  be. 

Then  circumstances  and  heredity  had  made  the  South  the  citadel  of 
conservatism.  What  a  brake  on  the  wild  wheels  of  this  mad  world 
her  conservatism  must  have  been,  could  it  only  have  won  the  prestige  of 
success,  had  it  only  been  its  luck  to  he  backed  by  the  stronger  battalions 
or  heavier  guns !  In  all  human  probability  it  would  have  saved  us  from 
many  of  the  evils  above  indicated,  as  well  as  the  maze  of  fads,  follies, 
and  isms  in  which  we  now  grope  in  such  utter  bewilderment- 
Even  Southern  writers  have  to  stultify  themselves  every  time  they 
approach  the  subject  as  to  what  might  have  been  if  the  victory  had 
been  accorded  to  us  instead  of  our  foes. 

Loud  in  praise  of  the  statesmanship  of  the  old  South,  strong  in  the 
belief  of  the  justice  of  her  cause ;  yet  no  sooner  do  they  reach  the  point 
where  the  stronger  battalions  of  the  Xorth  prevail  than  they  drop  on 
their  knees  and  thank  Heaven  for  having  saved  the  South  from  her- 
self. They  thank  Providence  that  instead  of  giving  the  South  a  respite 
from  Xorthern  incendiarism,  instead  of  smoothing  her  way  so  that  she 
might  put  by  slavery  in  the  least  harmful  manner,  it  brought  down  upon 
her  three  million  of  armed  men,  who,  destroying  the  flower  of  her  man- 
hood, breaking  the  heart  of  her  womanhood,  consigning  her  children 
to  poverty  and  ignorance,  reducing  her  people  to  virtual  beggars,  and 
would  have  forced  miscegenation,  mongrelism,  upon  her,  but  for  the  met- 
tle of  her  stock  !  Others  may  think  as  they  will,  but  I  cannot  hring  myself 
to  hold  any  such  slanderous  opinions  of  Providence.  I  cannot  see  the 
hand  of  Providence  (though  I  might  a  sootier  one)  in  such  fell  work  as, 
on  the  one  hand  suffering  Xorthern  abolition  incendiarism  to  arouse  and 
inflame  the  resentment  of  the  South,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  Xorthern 
ingenuity  to  invent  the  cotton  gin,  thus  at  the  critical  moment  infinitely 
increasing  the  value  of  slaves,  and  forestalling  the  South  in  her  earnest 
endeavors  to  put  an  end  to  slavery.  That  the  South  was  denied  the  in- 
estimable privilege  of  abolishing  this  curse  which  the  cruel  hand  of  Fate 
had  fastened  upon  her,  thus  saving  herself  the  unspeakable  loss  and  woe 
and  humiliation  that  the  war  entailed,  is  no  proof  that  the  Southern 


21 

way  was  the  wrong  way.  Success  is  no  proof  of  right,  nor  failure  of 
wrong.  Yet  men  whose  very  religion  is  founded  on  faith  in  One  who 
from  the  low  viewpoint  of  material  things  sounded  the  abysmal  depths 
of  failure,  now  cry  aloud  that  it  is.  The  vessel  of  iron  will  ever  smash 
the  one  of  gold  against  which  in  the  rough  mischances  of  the  world  it 
is  thrown,  though  the  latter,  from  the  fineness  of  its  material  and  the 
nobleness  of  its  design,  might  be  fit  to  edify  mankind  forever. 

0.  W.  Blackball. 
Kitteell,  X.  C.j  January.  1915. 

fin  regard  to  race  segregation,  I  would  add  that  the  question  was  exten- 
sively discussed  at  the  North  in  the  early  part  of  the  war,  and  Florida  sug- 
gested as  the  State  to  be  thus  utilized  when  the  South  should  be  subjugated. 
This  being  considered  too  small,  Texas  was  proposed.) 


EDWARDS    &   BROUGHTON    PRINTING    CO..    RALEIGH.    N.    C. 


00032726854 

FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


U 


c~ 


->ot     c> 


Apdtft- 


C  CY  C«_-. XcrAjlo 


Form  No.  A-368 


